As states plan for and implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA), estimates of the state and local geographic distribution of the ACA coverage expansion populations and the healthcare workforce are necessary for identifying areas where the size of the insurance expansion population, relative to the supply of health care professionals, indicates the potential for access-to-care problems.

Dr. John Graves, Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University, is leading a SHARE-funded project to model these distributions in order to help states prepare for the change in demand for health care services under the ACA. Dr. Graves will present findings from this modeling work on a June 14th SHARE webinar during which he will discuss both demand- and supply- side issues that affect whether access-to-care problems will arise in a given area.

Demand-side questions include:

• How much care will the newly insured use?
• How many uninsured will be eligible for coverage?
• How can we construct county estimates of coverage availability?

Supply-side questions include:

• How can we identify primary care providers in local areas?
• How can we identify non-physician providers who could provide primary care?
• How can we construct accurate geographic measures of provider supply? For example, how do population-to-physician ratios compare to spatial models?  

Dr. Graves will bring all these issues together, discussing his overall findings and the implications of these finding for states as they consider their policy options in preparation for the ACA coverage expansions and the resulting increased pressure on the health care delivery system.

Joining Dr. Graves for this discussion will be Dr. Peter Buerhaus, Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Heatlh Workforce Studies at Vanderbilt University Medical center, who is a co-investigator on the project and an expert in workforce issues.

For further information about this event, please contact Carrie Au-Yeung at butle180@umn.edu or 612-625-2492.